Elevating Mealtime Excellence by Building Staff Competency
摘要
Mealtime challenges are a prevalent issue faced by many young children and their families, which only increases for autistics/individuals with autism (Ledford et al., Res Autism Spectr Disord 52:69–80, 2018). While encountering mealtime concerns is a typical part of early development, the persistence of such challenges can lead to poor health outcomes and adversely affect the quality of life for children and their caregivers. Therefore, behavior analysts are often faced with addressing these challenges to assist in preventing long-term negative consequences for the individual and their caregivers; however, assessing and intervening in mealtime challenges requires specialized training. Given that there are a variety of mealtime challenges with different levels of intensity, behavior analysts must ensure they are always practicing within their scope of competence and collaborating with others when more training is needed. This chapter will review the levels of intensity and the training required at each level while also providing an overview of behavior-analytic training and supervision approaches to train behavior analysts for mealtime challenges.